FreeBSD is a UNIX-like operating system for the i386, amd64, IA-64, arm, MIPS, powerpc, ppc64, PC-98 and UltraSPARC platforms based on U.C. Berkeley's "4.4BSD-Lite" release, with some "4.4BSD-Lite2" enhancements. It is also based indirectly on William Jolitz's port of U.C. Berkeley's "Net/2" to the i386, known as "386BSD", though very little of the 386BSD code remains. FreeBSD is used by companies, Internet Service Providers, researchers, computer professionals, students and home users all over the world in their work, education and recreation. FreeBSD comes with over 20,000 packages (pre-compiled software that is bundled for easy installation), covering a wide range of areas: from server software, databases and web servers, to desktop software, games, web browsers and business software - all free and easy to install.

To compare the software in this project to the software available in other distributions, please see our Compare Packages page.

Notes: In case where multiple versions of a package are shipped with a distribution, only the default version appears in the table. For indication about the GNOME version, please check the "nautilus" and "gnome-shell" packages. The Apache web server is listed as "httpd" and the Linux kernel is listed as "linux". The KDE desktop is represented by the "plasma-desktop" package and the Xfce desktop by the "xfdesktop" package.

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Past reviews - sort by:

Version: 11.2Rating: 9Date: 2018-10-27Votes: 9

I gave it a 9, because on systems it is best tailored for — namely servers and virtual machines — it does at least as well as the enterprise Linux distros, with its low latency being its chief advantage over Linux on the former. On desktops and laptops it has served as a major annoyance for me.

Package management is a point of significant frustration. There are two approaches: binary package management (pkg) and the FreeBSD Ports Collection (FPC). Sadly mixing the two is dangerous, and while you may want to use binaries all the way, if you're a beginner, this isn't always possible. An good example is the NVIDIA package in the pkg collection, which was built against the 11.1 kernel, so on 11.2 you have to build it using the FPC if you want it to work. As NVIDIA depends on several packages that conflict with pkg packages one will likely come to a point where one has to uninstall many of them and build them manually with Ports. There's a tool called Poudriere that eases this but either way you have to compile a heap of packages, which takes a lot of time and heats up your PC.

Software compatibility is a major weakness. Sure it has Linux binary compatibility, but in order to run a Linux binary on it you need to satisfy the binary's library and other binary dependencies, which is not always possible, or at least easy. Netflix and VSCode are among the apps that do not work on FreeBSD, at least not without virtualization/dangerous hacks.

Its hardware support is lousy; WiFi chips, sound cards and graphics cards tend to cause the most headaches.

It is also difficult to share files between FreeBSD and Linux. There's the ext2fs kernel module but it does a lousy job with the latest ext iteration, ext4. I couldn't mount my Linux partitions at all on it. Accessing FreeBSD files from Linux is also nigh impossible, unless you used a ZFS, but the guided set up in the installer for FreeBSD won't let you use a ZFS unless you use up the whole disk.

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Version: 11.1Rating: 10Date: 2018-10-26Votes: 2

Use Freebsd as our DNS/Management cluster for years. Completely happy with it's performance and consistency of configuration. Been a Freebsd user since 1999.

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Version: 11-STABLERating: 10Date: 2018-10-18Votes: 1

First time using it and i love it, easy to install..if you know a little about linux.
Overall seems well documented and pretty stable i will try on old laptop next time.